In Defense of Bacon

by Alan Soble

"What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.
Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research."
 Francis Bacon, Novum organum, book I, 49.

eminists science critics, in particular Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and
Evelyn Fox Keller, claim that sexist sexual metaphors played an important role in the
rise of modern science, and they single out the writings of Francis Bacon.

Science and Rape

In an article printed in the New York Times, Sandra Harding
introduced to the paper's readers one of the more shocking ideas to emerge from feminist
science studies:

Carolyn Merchant, who wrote a book called "Death of Nature,"
and Evelyn Keller's collection of papers called "Reflections on Gender & Science" talk
about the important role that sexual metaphors played in the development of modern science.
They see these notions of dominating mother nature by the good husband scientist. If we put
in the most blatant feminist terms used today, we'd talk about marital rape, the husband
as scientist forcing nature to his wishes.[1]

Harding asserts elsewhere, too, that sexist metaphors played an important
role in the development of science.[2] But here she understates the
point by referring to "marital rape" and so does not convey it in the "most blatant feminist
terms" because her usual way of making the point is to talk about rape and torture in the
same breath, not mentioning marriage. For example, Harding refers to "the rape and torture
metaphors in the writing of Sir Francis Bacon and others (e.g., Machiavelli) enthusiastic
about the new scientific method" (SQIF, 113). By associating rape metaphors with
science, Harding expects the unsavoriness of rape to spill over into science:

Understanding nature as a woman indifferent to or even
welcoming rape was fundamental to the interpretation of these new conceptions of
nature and inquiry. There does appear to be reason to be concerned about the
intellectual, moral, and political structures of modern science when we think about
how, from its very beginning, misogynous and defensive gender politics and scientific
method have provided resources for each other. (SQIF, 113, 116)

I dare not hazard to guess as to how many people read Harding's article
in the Times. How many clipped out that scandalous bit of bad publicity for science
and put it on the refrigerator, or how many still have some vague idea tying science to
rape. But the belief that vicious sexual metaphors were important to science has gained
some currency in the academy.[3]

Contemporary Sexual Metaphors

In Whose
Science? Whose Knowledge? Harding proposes that the "sexist and misogynistic
metaphors" that have thus far "infused" science be replaced by positive images of strong,
independent women," metaphors based on "womanliness" and female eroticism woman-designed
for women," (WSWK, 267, 301). Harding defends her proposal by claiming that "the
prevalence of such alternative metaphors" would lead to "less partial and distorted
descriptions and explanations" and would "foster the growth of knowledge": "If they were
to excite people's imaginations in the way that rape, torture and other misogynistic
metaphors have apparently energized generations of male science enthusiasts, there is no
doubt that thought would move in new and fruitful directions" (267). What are the
misogynistic metaphors that have already "energized" science and that must be replaced?
In a footnote, Harding sends us to chapter 2 of WSWK. There we find a section
entitled "The Sexual Meaning of Nature and Inquiry" (42-46), which contains merely four
examples of metaphors in the writings of two philosophers (Francis Bacon and Paul
Feyerabend), one scientist (Richard Feynman), and the unnamed preparers of a National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) booklet, "On
Being a Scientist."

In the passage from Feynman's Nobel lecture quoted by Harding, the
physicist reminisces about a theory in physics as if it were a woman with whom he fell
in love, a woman who has become old yet has been a good mother and left many children
(WSWK, 43-44; SQIF, 120). Harding incredibly interprets this passage as
"thinking of mature women as good for nothing but mothering" (SQIF, 112). From
the NAS booklet, Harding quotes: "The laws of nature are not waiting to be plucked
like fruit from a tree. They are hidden and unyielding, and the difficulties of grasping
them add greatly to the satisfaction of success" (WSWK, 44). Here, says Harding,
one can hear "restrained but clear echoes" of sexuality. Perhaps the metaphors used by
Feynman and NAS are sexual, but they are hardly misogynistic or vicious, and I wonder
why Harding put them on display.[4] These were supposed to be
examples of how viciously sexist metaphors "energized" science, but they seem feeble.
In fact, about her four examples Harding claims only that in Bacon's writings is there
a rape metaphor.[5] But let us examine her treatment of Feyerabend
first, for there are significant connections between them.

Harding quotes the closing lines of a critique of Kuhn and Lakatos
by Feyerabend, who ends his technical paper with the joke that his view "changes science
from a stern and demanding mistress into an attractive and yielding courtesan who tries
to anticipate every wish of her lover. Of course, it is up to us to choose either a
dragon or a pussy cat for our company. I do not think I need to explain my own
preferences" (Feyerabend, 229).[6] Harding's complaint is not that
Feyerabend employed a sexual metaphor, for in WSWK Harding condones "alterative"
sexual images reflecting "female eroticism woman-designed for women" (267). Rather,
Feyerabend's metaphoristhe wrong kind of sexual metaphor. Harding quotes the same
passage in her earlier SQIF, giving it as an example of the attribution of gender
to scientific inquiry (SQIF, 120).

In her view, this passage conveys, as does Feynman's, a cultural image
of "manliness." Whereas Feynman's notion of manliness is "the good husband and father,"
Feyerabend's notion is "the sexually competitive, locker-room jock" (SQIF, 120).
Thus science, in Feyerabend's metaphor, is a sexually passive, accommodating woman, and
the scientist and the philosopher of science are the jocks she sexually pleases.[7] I do not see how portraying science as a courtesan implies that the
men who visit her, scientists and philosophers, are locker-room jocks. The fancy word
courtesan, if it implies anything at all, vaguely alludes to a debonair Hugh
Hefner puffing on his pipe, not to a Terry Bradshaw swatting bare male butt with a wet
towel. (Should we homogenize men, or think of the philosopher of science as a locker-room
jock wannabe?) Harding concludes her brief discussion of Feyerabend in SQIF by
claiming that his metaphor, coming strategically at the end of his paper, serves a
pernicious purpose. He depicts "science and its theories" as "exploitable women," and the
scientist as a masculine, manly man to imply to his (male) audience that his philosophical
"proposal should be appreciated because it replicates gender politics" of a sort
they find congenial (SQIF, 121). In WSWK, Harding similarly asserts that
this metaphor was the way Feyerabend "recommended" his view (43).

This line of thought is not very promising. Some men readers prefer
strict to submissive women; would Feyerabend's contrary preference for kittens tend to
undermine for them his critique of Kuhn, because it does not match their taste? I agree
that a woman reading his paper would probably not empathize with the metaphor, even if
they concurred with the critique of Kuhn that preceded it. But they could, if they
wished, ignore it as irrelevant to Feyerabend's argumentsat least because the
metaphor comes at the end, tacked onto the arguments already made and digested. Had
Bacon employed rape metaphors, Harding would be right that "it is difficult to
imagine women as an enthusiastic audience" (SQIF, 116). Still, had there been
any women in Bacon's audience, they could have disregarded his metaphors and accepted
(or rejected) the rest on its own merits. For Harding to assert that the men in
Feyerabend's audience would be in part persuaded by this appeal and that Feyerabend
thought that he could seduce them with his "conscientious efforts at gender symbolism"
(120) insults men and exaggerates the chicanery of philosophy.

Harding on Bacon

According to Harding, vicious sexual metaphors were infused into modern
science at its very beginning, were instrumental in its ascent, and eventually became "a
substantive part of science" (WSWK, 44). Harding thinks Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
was crucial to this process. What she says about Feyerabend, that he hoped his view would
"be appreciated because it replicates gender politics" (SQIF, 121), is what she
claims about Bacon, although in more extreme terms: "Francis Bacon appealed to rape
metaphors to persuade his audience that experimental method is a good thing" (WSWK,
43; see SQIF, 237).[9]

This is a damning criticism. Bacon is not depicted as a negligible
Feyerabend making silly jokes about science the prostitute. Rather Harding is claiming
that Bacon drew an analogy between the experimental method and rape and tried to gain
advantage from it (see SQIF, 116). Imagine the scene that Harding implies. Bacon
wants to persuade fellow scholars to study nature systematically by using experimental
methods that elicit changes in nature, rather than to study nature by accumulating
specimens and observing phenomena passively. So, thinking that his audience found rape
desirable, attractive, permissible, or at least that it would be fun, even if despicable,
Bacon champions experimentalism by drawing an analogy between it and rape. Bacon says to
them: Think of doing science my way as forcing apart with your knees the slender thighs
of an unwilling woman, pinning her under the weight of your body as she kicks and screams
in your ears, grabbing her poor little jaw roughly with your fist to shut her mouth, and
trying to thrust your penis into her dry vagina; that, boys, is what the experimental
method is all about.

What did Bacon do or say to deserve such an abusive accusation? Is
there any evidence that Bacon's writings contain a rape metaphor? Here is the entire text
that Harding offers to support her charge:

For you have but to hound nature in her wanderings, and
you will be able when you like to lead and drive her afterwards to the same place again.
Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering and penetrating into those holes and
corners when the inquisition of truth is his whole object. (WSWK, 43)

I suppose that a man who made no scruple of penetrating holes (and
corners?) might be a rapist, but he also might be a foxhunter, a proctologist, or a
billiard player. And I suppose that to "hound" nature could be seen as raping her. But
the spirited student who storms my office and too often sits down next to me in the
cafeteria, hoping for some words of wisdomno more than thatalso is
hounding me.

[ Continued on pages 198-215; The full text of the
original draft of this essay is also
available from Alan Soble's webpage at the
University of New Orleans Philosophy Department. ]